In my Western Art Music seminar (a writing seminar, might I add), we started the term with the early symphony – a little Sammartini, a little Stamitz, some Martinez, a bit of Haydn. The focus was on social history. But to bring it forward in time, I’ve done three things, and it’s really paying off!
First, as an in-class short-writing exercise, I gave them a 3x5 card, and asked them what *later* symphony they’d take with them as their only music for three years on a desert island, and why. Then I let them add a second piece that they thought would impress their studio instructor or other faculty mentor. (This is how I take class roll; it’s also how I get them thinking about how things apply to their broader musical lives.)
The next day, I put them in small groups and reminded them of some of the “desert island” pieces they chose, then ask their groups to create a chronological timeline of TEN post-Haydn symphony composers, without computers and without phones. There was a good bit of laughter. Now who came before that? Who was that composer they played last semester? Did such-and-so count as a symphony? We put those lists on the board, and looked at commonalities across all the lists, and who was missing. It was interesting fodder for the “who decides” discussion:
We had read the Donne UK report (scroll past the proms report; the one on symphony repertoire is down below: Equality & Diversity in Global Repertoire, 2023/2024 Season) – so they’re definitely starting to see patterns in their world. So that discussion got rich and interesting.
And then the storm hit, and we’ve been out of classes for a week. So rather than have them go off and do something on Machaut with no context, no background, and no guiding framework, I canceled our Machaut assignment and moved them back to our desert island:
Okay, here we are in the world. Take 45 - 60 - 90 minutes and listen to one of those symphonies you mentioned as brilliant, desert-island, must-engage works. Voxer me with the three things that gave you shivers (or annoyed you) the most. Focus on the longer works: Mendelssohn, Schumann, Brahms, Mahler, Stravinsky, etcetera. How does your chosen work draw on things we saw with our "early symphony" exemplars? How does it take the basic symphonic ideas we saw in Sammartini, Haydn, and Martinez, and turn them into something bigger, stranger, or more intense?
The report-outs have been lovely. Several went for Tchaikovsky symphonies (which I think is weird, but I’m only the instructor), and most of them have spoken to the satisfaction of really listening to something they’ve wanted to get to know or to re-encounter. And the world is a better place when we stop and remind ourselves of what we love and what we came to do.
For me, that’s been the real gift of this little experiment: not the lists or the timelines, but watching students slow down long enough to hear why a piece mattered to them in the first place. In a semester full of deadlines and disruptions, that kind of listening feels quietly radical. Music makes our lives better; it’s nice to see them remember that.
So go and listen to whatever first drew you to music once upon a time. May it bring you comfort now.
